WASHINGTON — In a move that sent shockwaves through the tech industry, former President Donald Trump signed an executive order today declaring all open-source code “un-American” and making its creation, distribution, or use punishable by up to 20 years in federal prison. “Nobody knew code could be free. It’s terrible, folks. Terrible,” Trump declared from his Mar-a-Lago residence. “Real Americans pay for their software, and they pay big league. That’s what made this country great.” The controversial order, scrawled in gold Sharpie on the back of a McDonald’s receipt, specifically targets what Trump called “socialist programmer communes” like GitHub and Linux. It requires all software to be developed behind closed doors and sold at “whatever price the market can bear, plus 50%.” Tech industry leaders were quick to respond, with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella reportedly doing backflips in his office while shouting “Windows forever!” Meanwhile, Linux creator Linus Torvalds was last seen attempting to seek political asylum in Finland, muttering something about “git push” and “force shutdown -h now.” The order has created particular confusion in the government sector, where thousands of federal websites running on open-source software suddenly became illegal. The White House’s own website temporarily displayed a blue screen of death with the message “ERROR: FREEDOM.EXE NOT FOUND.” “This is a great day for American software,” said Trump’s newly appointed Chief of Proprietary Code Enforcement, a sentient copy of Windows Vista. “We’re going to make coding great again by putting it behind the biggest, most beautiful paywalls you’ve ever seen.” At press time, a underground resistance movement of developers had already formed, sharing code snippets via an elaborate network of Morse code signals sent through reprogrammed coffee makers.
Fuck guys you got me. I read half that before I saw it was the onion.
These are turning into jump scares.
Cool profile picture!
Thanks, cooked it up when I was figuring out Ai stuff.
I don’t laugh at the Onion anymore sadly, I only let out a sigh of relief.
We live in such a post-satire world now, this felt totally realistic. Got me too for a second.
Fucking Onion headline got me again, I legitimately believed this until I saw where it was posted haha
same. I don’t like that reality is that level of insanity.
I went looking for corroborating stories before I noticed one of them was Onion…
why is this believable. literally had to check the community.
It’s just an error on the date, just wait a few weeks
At this point, I think it’s the Onion’s active strategy. Release the news a month in advance and hope it’ll prevent it from happening somehow.
It ain’t working
Same, first time I was tricked by one of these headlines this year. I had to recheck the source because it sounded real for a minute.
Yeah this might be the first time I ate the onion.
Because we live in the stupidest of timelines. Courtesy of your average stupid as fuck American voter and non-voter.
Not to mention the “good” party who couldn’t even be bothered to pretend to be leftists this time around
deleted by creator
Well, in a truly and legitimately harrowing way, I can see a world where a certain neo-nazi South African billionaire tech-fraud idiot is putting this idea in his ear.
On the other hand, it would nuke the US economy to do this, so that makes it a little less likely
And that nazi’s cars use a shit ton of open-source software
I have no expectation he is capable of understanding that
Since when has nuking the US economy been a problem? He’s literally doing that to the country right now.
Why do people keep acting like anything he does makes logical sense? At this point the dumbest man alive has still been able to find plenty of idiots who fall for his obviously bad nonsense and who will act like he’s “smart enough not to do [thing he has already done, is doing, or will do] at least!”.
How’s the saying go? Fool me once, shame on you, fool me five-hundred times and you can sure as shit I’m a US citizen!”
Making open source illegal? Probably not.
Removing the copyleft licensing to allow corporate entities to take ownership of open source code? Absolutely - in fact, I don’t think it’s premature to assume that most creative commons and open source licensing cases will fail in court in a Trump administration.
So in a world where licenses become meaningless in the US, how should we proceed? I’m happy to “pirate” what used to be open since the source is available. Do we just try to anonymize developer identities and everything becomes “published in the EU” ;) , because that’s fine with me.
in a world where licenses are meaningless you have either just killed the economy stone fucking dead or you have effectively abolished copyright as a whole.
The oligarch corpos are not subject to the same rule of law. They can steal your work, and you will sent to the gulag for not giving your code to them sooner.
Let’ssss goooooo!
I’m worried that when it comes to it Trump’s appointed supreme court will invalidate the GPL.
They absolutely will. Can you imagine how much money Linux would be worth if everyone who uses it had to pay a licensing fee to Oracle? There’s a reason Ellison is on the Trump train - there’s a lot of gravy available to him once open source protections go away, and he’s been fighting this battle for 10 years. Expect Google v. Oracle to go the way of the Roe v. Wade.
Jesus fucking christ, fuck you for the heart attack I just got 😂
Same. It took me a bit too long to realise the satire.
What world do we live in where we actually think this is possible!?!
Holy shit I didn’t see the onion logo for a sec, don’t DO that to me lmao
Shut up. Dont give him ideas.
Ok, I bit this onion. 10/10
Please do NOT give that (insert very bad word) any ideas!! I almost had a heart attack from this!
I think I stopped breathing for a some serious seconds.
Cunt. I filled it in for you.
Bellend? Wanker? Cockwaffle? Comment OP gave us a blank space with a lot of possible words.
Fucking retarded asshole?
.world users dont say slurs challenge
Oh. Gosh darn! He’s a bad bad bad guy.
Don’t be a sarcastic git. There were plenty of other words you could’ve used that didn’t compare intellectually-challenged people with fascist dictators. It makes them look bad by association.
I’m sorry I insulted the intellectually challenged community. But how do you call the stuff that really smells in a sewer? Can that be the descriptive word to use?
It still makes “shit” look bad by comparison, but feces isn’t sentient. So good ahead, I guess?
I fully ate the onion on this one. 100% believable headline.
I would’ve if the logo wasn’t on the posts, super noticeable. I might miss the community name just written out but that logo ruins any chance I could eat the onion on here.
The tell on this joke (aside from it being the onion community) was trump actually knowing or caring about open source.
Third time today they have got me with the onion, it’s all too believable.
It’s really not believable. Critical thinking is lost. I’m no Trump fan, but comeon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements_by_Donald_Trump
Yes, critical thinking is lost in the signing of plainly illegal and otherwise impractical and damaging executive orders.
Damn, got me.
It would be funnier if it wasn’t written this way.
“This is a great day for American software,” said Trump’s newly appointed Chief of Proprietary Code Enforcement, a sentient copy of Windows Vista.
I laughed out loud
What do you mean by that?
This isn’t satire, it’s just make believe that confuses a number of things. It’s just not funny written this way.
What makes it not satire? Can you think of any current events to which this holds up a mirror? Some of the jokes don’t fully land and there are a few low-brow or layman’s errors, but everything makes sense from the most basic tech users to the most tech-savvy.
You could, and many do, argue that Disaster Movie is not funny, but claiming it’s not a spoof would be wholly incorrect. I’m mostly confused that you’re saying this isn’t satire and then saying that it checks the boxes for satire. Satire/spoofs don’t have to be funny.
Either way, when y’all are saying that this isn’t funny written this way, I’d really like you to elaborate. ¿ʎɐʍ sᴉɥʇ uǝʇʇᴉɹʍ ʎuunɟ ʇᴉ sI
What’s making it unfunny or how could you rewrite parts to make it funny? I appreciate the fact that y’all are willing to provide honest input, but using constructive criticism would be even more appreciated and help make this community better for everyone, including yourselves.
Real: Trump Fires Nuclear Weapons Workers
Real: Trump un-fires Nuclear Safety Workers
Parody: Trump Fires Nuclear Weapons Workers, and Re-Hires McRib Sandwich
Satire: Trump Fires White House Secretary of GrubHub
By contrast, this post’s writing just takes a premise and mashes then up with things that are based in fact - executive orders, open-source software - then tries to shoehorn a joke into how they could possibly be funny IF true. It’s like trying a sketch that doesn’t work because there is no take on a take, just randomly thought up things that sound like they would be stupid if they happened. It’s trying to be a parody without a basis in fact, or at a stretch satire with all the facts wrong. It’s just not really funny and comes off as trying too hard to make a joke.
I can get behind this criticism and admit that I felt mostly the same. I figured that either OP didn’t flesh out their narrative and just kept proposing more headlines and bylines. Or, they used an LLM.
I’d like to hope that this OP put OC in the UI, you see? Either way, the thing I most appreciate about this post is that they tried. I like the idea of people sharing their harvest from their own onion trees, it makes for a nice little onion amuse-bouche.
The fact that they began with closing open-source as the premise, and Trump’s penchant for making up words and definitions that prove he doesn’t know anything, I was hoping that somewhere in there would have been a quote like:
It’s not going to be closed source, okay? They keep trying to tell you that it will be closed source, and it’s evil, and- They want to talk about evil?! Chayina made an AI; it’s not so intelligent, even though they say it’s intelligent. That’s what the I stands for. Chaiyna made this DeepSeek AI and just gave it out open-source. Like, bing bong bong bing bong, and you have this where it doesn’t even work very well, but they say it’ll be more efficient than our guys’ AI… Intel, all the great AI companies. And they’re kicking our butts! They’re laughing at us while I’m trying to stop them from invading your computers! I’m going to pass a law. They’re trying to give it to you- open-source, okay? They already gave the world enough when Joe Baiden was failing at– forcing everyone- vaccines. So, I’m having my people, I have the best people, they really know what they’re doing, I’m having my people make an executive order that I will sign! And there will be no more open-source! Not closed-source… Not closed source- it’s going to be beautiful folks. Ajar-source.
Side note: the crazy juxtaposition of your headlines made your spoof and satire examples that much more funny. “Re-Hires McRib Sandwich” made me cackle.
Hey, I’m just proud we have Onion-flavoured Lemmy OC!
